4) As a rule, I try to at least sketch in the setting by the second paragraph or so. I hate having bodiless voices talking in a void. Let us visualize where we are.

That's an area where I often fall short -- establishing the setting clearly. I was surprised when the Only Superhuman audiobook had background sounds suggesting a crowded restaurant in a scene that I'd envisioned as a private brunch in a character's home. Evidently I was too vague about the setting.

5) As a STAR TREK writer, you have the option of being able to quickly set up the basic situation via a quick Captain's Log entry. "Stardate 3284.4. We are responding to a distress signal from a Federation colony near the Klingon border . . . ."

I thought the editors these days preferred to avoid opening with a log entry, since it's become kind of a cliche.

Just keep it short and to the point. Don't go overboard trying to explain 100 years of interplanetary politics. (My log entries are seldom more than one paragraph long.)

I'm reminded of The Abode of Life by "Lee Correy" (G. Harry Stine). I may be exaggerating, but my memory of it is that virtually every chapter opened with a log entry that rambled on for a page or two and went into a lot more depth than we needed. It got to the point that when I re-read the book, I'd often just skip over the log entries.

__________________Christopher L. Bennett Homepage -- Site update 11/16/14 including annotations for "The Caress of a Butterfly's Wing" and overview for DTI: The Collectors